Oscar T. SerquiñaDepartment of Speech Communication and Theatre ArtsCollege of Arts and Sciences
UP Diliman

Out and About: Migrant Bakla, Perverse Intimacies, and the Musical of Migration in Liza Magtoto’s Care Divas. Kritika Kultura, 27: 199-248, August 2016.

Figure 1. Wearing their ordinary work clothes, the five bakla caregivers, in the play’s opening, sing and dance their collective hardships while in diaspora. Photo courtesy of PETA Library and Archives.

Figure 10. The whole cast of Care Divas in their glamorous garb. Photo courtesy of PETA Library and Archives.

This paper analyzes the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA)’s stage musical, Care Divas, for its figuration of the Filipino migrant worker as bakla and for its consequent queering of labor out-migration from the Philippines. It problematizes the notion of “perverse intimacy,” particularly through the play’s employment of gay language and performance as agentive practices of survival in the diaspora. Finally, it interrogates the play’s aestheticization of kabaklaan and migrant work through a musical drama-comedy format, which deploys song and dance, as well as laughter and sentimentality, in order to make a spectacle out of the foibles of migrant bakla, to render visible the agency of these gendered Filipino laborers abroad, and finally, to underscore the Filipino migrant workers’ charged cosmopolitan ethic of oneness with or belongingness to the world.

Global, Regional, and National Comparative Risk Assessment of 79 Behavioural, Environmental and Occupational, and Metabolic Risks or Clusters of Risks, 1990–2015: A Systematic Analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015. Lancet, 388 (10053): 1659–1724, 8 October 2016.

Figure 1.Global proportion of all-cause DALYs attributable to behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risk factors and their overlaps by region for both sexes combined in 2015Locations are reported in order of total all-cause DALYs population attributable fraction. DALYs=disability-adjusted life-years. ∩=interaction.

Figure 5Global decomposition of changes in all-cause DALYs attributable to Level 3 risk factors from 1990 to 2015. Risks are reported in order of percentage change in the number of attributable DALYs from 1990 to 2015. We excluded DALYs attributable to unsafe sex because this risk factor is not estimated on the basis of exposure and relative risk. Changes due to population growth, population ageing, risk exposure, and the risk-deleted DALY rate are shown. DALYs=disability-adjusted life-years.

A huge international study of global causes of death has revealed that since 1990, there has been a profound change in risk factors for death. In 1990, child and maternal malnutrition and unsafe water, sanitation, and lack of hand washing were the leading risks for death, but these have now been replaced by dietary risks and high blood pressure.

Catchy title of research: Targeting Old Cells as a Means to Delay Skin Aging

Strategies to target senescent cells in the skin.

Our skin has an amazing ability to regenerate after wounding. However, skin cells, like most of our cells, only have a limited lifespan. With age, our skin will fail to proliferate and will undergo a process called cellular senescence. This article reviews the different studies on how senescent cells may contribute to skin aging and how removing these old cells may help delay the signs and symptoms of skin aging.

Catchy title of research: Hospital Garbage Collectors: Are they doing it right?

Hospitals require special garbage collectors to gather hospital wastes which are very hazardous as they contain infected blood, sputum and other body fluids from sick individuals. These garbage collectors require permits to operate, and should pass all the requirements as set by the Philippine government.The author studied six tertiary hospitals located in the south of Manila City. The research showed that there were four companies who collected the special garbage of the study hospitals. All said companies conformed to the standards of the World Health Organization and to the rules and regulations as set by the Department of Health and Department of Environment and natural Resources. In short, they conformed to the standards for Legal Permits, Off-Site Transport, Personal Protective Devices and Off-Site Waste Disposal.

Fig 2–Examples of water-holding containers monitored in each fixed household to determine the presence of the immature stages of mosquito (Los Banos, Laguna, June 2013). (A) Defrost tray of a refrigerator; (B) Drums, pails, and basins; (C) Coconut shell used as receptacle for rain water; (D) Dish rack tray.

Mosquito Larvicidal Trap (MLT) is a modification of an oviposition trap (or ovitrap) utilized by De Las Llagaset al (2002, 2007, 2012) in all dengue mosquito surveillance and control studies in the Philippines. MLT is composed of an ovitrap incorporated with 2% Novaluron, a chitin synthesis inhibitor type of insect growth regulator, which was proven to have an attractant and killing effect to mosquitoes in an ovitrap clean water.Two MLTswere installed in each of the 220 households in two endemic sites for dengue transmission in Los Baños, Province of Laguna (i.e. Barangay Batong Malake and Barangay San Antonio) from July 2012 to June 2013. The MLTs were installed, monitored for the presence of mosquito immature stages and maintained every three weeks inside each household. The efficacy of MLT as a surveillance tool was measured against the conventional inspection of household water-holding containers and the classical ovitrap for the presence of immature stages of mosquito. The presence of mosquitoes in the MLT, ovitrap and containers indicates the level of household mosquito infestation. MLT as an autocidal/larvicidal trap was also gauged in terms of its relative attractiveness to ovipositing mosquitoes compared to household containers and the classical ovitrap.The results of the study showed that MLT was more attractive to Aedes for egg deposition than ovitrap or household containers inside each house in Barangay BatongMalake and Barangay San Antonio. MLT can induce immature mortality, indicating its autocidal activity to mosquito larvae, and it can prevent pupal development. The use of MLT as an integral component of dengue vector control program may enhance reduction in density of mosquitoes at immature stages thus lessening dependency on adulticiding efforts.

The wave equation with viscoelastic boundary damping and internal or boundary delay is considered. The memory kernel is assumed to be integrable and completely monotonic. Under certain conditions on the damping factor, delay factor and the memory kernel it is shown that the energy of the solutions decay to zero either asymptotically or exponentially. In the case of internal delay, the result is obtained through spectral analysis and the Gearhart-Pruss Theorem, whereas in the case of boundary delay, it is obtained using the energy method.

Our research describes new strategies of making porous materials known as zeolites towards improvement of their property to absorb molecules and compounds. By varying different parameters during zeolite preparation, materials that have very similar structure are observed to have different stability when subjected to high temperature. Two closely-related porous materials, referred to as P1 and P2 that only differs by a subtle twisting in of their structures are prepared. Compared to the P1 material, the structure of the material P2 exhibits very high stability at high temperatures where industrial applications are often conducted. This opens up the possibility of using these materials for actual applications in the petrochemical industry for example.The product materials ability to absorb gas molecules such as hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and water vapor were also tested. The reason behind its ability to absorb only certain types of gases was further studied using computer simulations.

Fig. 1.Schematic diagram of the atmospheric plasma jet device used in this study.

Philippines has been reported to be one of the leading producers of coconut in the world. With its economic importance, coconut and its derived products are given much attention for safety and quality. Coconut liquid endosperm is a heat-sensitive product and requires less destructive processing techniques to ensure safety with retained fresh-like quality. This study aims to develop microwave atmospheric pressure plasma jet treatment as non-thermal food processing technology to be used by the food industry in order to achieve both optimal fresh-like characteristics and recommended safety level. Baseline inactivation rates to be used for process schedules were determined but the feasibility of this potential food technology needs further assessment in terms of nutritional, physicochemical, and sensory quality.

1,4-Dioxane is a colorless and flammable liquid with a faintly sweet odor. It has been widely used as a stabilizer for chlorinated solvents such as 1,1,1- trichloroethane, trichloroethene (TCE), and tetrachloroethene. 1,4- Dioxane is also used as a solvent in the manufacturing processes of ethylene glycol and ethylene oxide. Owing to its extensive use, 1,4- dioxane has frequently considered as a persistent contaminant in surface water and groundwater. 1,4-Dioxane is recognized as a serious pollutant in aquatic environments because of its acute and chronic toxicity as well as its suspected carcinogenicity. In this study, the isolated strains containing the phylum TM7 might play an important role in 1,4- dioxane degradation. The 1,4- dioxane-degrading bacterial consortia is also the first report on phylum TM7 bacteria utilizing 1,4- dioxane as the sole carbon and energy source during biodegradation.

Godofreda V. Dalmacion and Emmanuel S. Baja*Department of Pharmacology and ToxicologyCollege of Medicine*Institute of Clinical EpidemiologyNational Institutes of HealthUP Manila

Hospital-Acquired Infection in Public Hospital Buildings in the Philippines: Is the Type of Ventilation Increasing the Risk?. Journal of Infection in Development Countries, 10 (11): 1236-1242, November 2016.

Normally, hospitals are places where sick people go to get well from their illnesses. But in the course of their confinement patients can inadvertently contract diseases affecting different organs of their body. The most common reasons cited are instrumentation or invasive procedures and an existing low immune system. Our study aimed to estimate at one point in time the number of patients with hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) in a public, urban hospital and whether the percentage of HAIs will be different between their naturally ventilated and the mechanically ventilated areas.In December 8, 2013, 63 out of 224 patients (28.1%) surveyed had 69 HAIs. Although both wards and intensive care units (ICUs) had high prevalence of HAIs of more than 15%, there was no significant difference in HAI prevalence between naturally ventilated wards and mechanically ventilated ICUs. Alarming though is the high prevalence of HAI in the naturally ventilated pediatric ward (40%), which is located near the driveway to the emergency room. Most common HAI was pneumonia at 35%. We hypothesize that the high HAI of over 15% could be due to the high volume of human traffic and overcrowding in the wards as many relatives including parents of the patients visit the ground floor wards. Finally, our previous study showed a high concentration of particulate matters (25 micrograms/m3) in the pediatric wards, which exceeds the WHO guideline compared to the mechanically ventilated ICUs of lower than 20 micrograms/m3.